Memeorandum

April 06, 2006

Negative Space

Architects sometimes refer to "negative space" as important in creating a desired effect - an area devoid of architectural details can enhance a larger effect.

Or amongst fans of detective fiction, there is the famous incident of the non-barking dog in the night-time - it was what did *not* happen that was important.

Today there is good blogospheric buzz about a new filing (39 page .pdf) by Special Counsel Fitzgerald in the Plame investigation. There is an overheated reaction to the news of President Bush's involvement, but for our current purposes it is what Fitzgerald does not say that is interesting.

Our quick reaction is this:

(a) Some of the responses to the Bush Connection are over-done - Fitzgerald does not come close to alleging wrong-doing by President Bush. However, he does explicitly state the opposite regarding Libby's leaks on p. 27 of the .pdf:

During this time, while the President was unaware of the role that the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser [i.e., Libby, who had both jobs] had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment, defendant implored White House officials to have a public statement issued exonerating him.

(b) There are fascinating new bits about Cheney's involvement, although the negative spaces are also fascinating. The filing buttresses the notion advanced by Chris Matthews and many others that Fitzgerald's real target was Dick Cheney. One might infer that the indictment of Libby was simply an attempt to elicit his cooperation, and that, so far at least, it is is a flip that failed.

(c) The Libby defense has made much of the possibility that the disclosure of Ms. Plame's CIA status did not actually harm national security, and that her covert status was not widely known within the White House. Their point is that, absent this information, Libby had no obvious reason to lie when talking to the FBI or the grand jury. Fitzgerald attempts to address this by explaining that Libby wanted to spare the White House political embarrassment, and that he feared for his job. However, Fitzgerald seems to have misunderstood or mis-stated the public record in this regard. From the filing:

Thus, as defendant approached his first FBI interview he knew that the White House had publicly staked its credibility on there being no White House involvement in the leaking of information about Ms. Wilson and that, at defendant’s specific request through the Vice President, the White House had publicly proclaimed that defendant was “not involved in this.” The President had vowed to fire anyone involved in leaking classified information. [Emp. added.]

Well. This old post covers what the President actually said on Sept 30, 2003 as well as subsequent press distortions. Here is George Bush from Sept 30:

And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

People who broke the law were to be fired; folks who leaked classified info were to be treated appropriately.

That actually might explain the motivation behind Libby's story about the NIE.

It also seems clear that Fitzgerald is holding few cards on the question of her status - this filing would have been a lovely opportunity for him to present any evidence at all that the White House , specifically Messrs. Cheney or Libby, had been warned about Ms. Plame's status.

(d) Fitzgerald has repeatedly told the judge that his investigation is ongoing. In the latest filing, he provides a strong hint that Rove (no surprise) and Hadley are still in trouble - per the filing, Rove and Hadley are not currently expected to be called by the government as witnesses. Given their roles in the indictment that seems odd, unless they are still under the gun.

Let's cover these with a bit more detail. The filing is in response to a defense motion for discovery, and Fitzgerald is explaining why he does not need to surrender certain documents. Here is the passage on Bush that prompted such excitement:

"Defendant testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote.

Mr. Libby is said to have testified that "at first" he rebuffed Mr. Cheney's suggestion to release the information because the estimate was classified. However, according to the vice presidential aide, Mr. Cheney subsequently said he got permission for the release directly from Mr. Bush. "Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE," the prosecution filing said.

Nothing illegal or untoward is alleged. Fitzgerald did talk to Bush and Cheney together, and if he had a different story from them, this would have been the time to note it. [This post covered the executive orders on declassification, and yes, of course the President can declassify things.]

That said, Libby's story is quite odd. Apparently, Cheney talked to Bush and got the secret declassification for Libby's July 8 meeting with Judy Miller. On a parallel track, Stephen Hadley and others were working to get portions of the NIE declassified, which happened on July 18. Yet Libby never told Hadley that the NIE had already been declassified, not even with a wink or a "Mission Accomplished". One can imagine that this story did not sit well with Fitzgerald.

(Sorry, bloggus interruptus - duty calls. On point (b), Cheney's involvement, some highlights are in this earlier post under "GET DICK!"

I will let points (c) and (d) stand alone for now.)

MORE: On point (c), Libby's motivation to lie: the defense position is that Libby had no reason to lie since he was not aware that Ms. Plame was covert, and, in any case, there has been damage assessment released showing that national security was harmed.

Fitzgerald's response, as noted above, is that Libby did not want to embarrass the White House or get himself fired by admitting involvement in the leak.

However - there is a peculiar discrepancy in the testimony of Matt Cooper and Lewis Libby. Per Libby's grand jury testimony, it was Libby who told Cooper that Joe Wilson's wife was with the CIA.

But Matt Cooper testified that it was he who disclosed the Plame tidbit to Libby; Libby responded with something like "I heard that, too".

So Fitzgerald's position is what - that Libby feared to tell "the truth" about his chat with Cooper, to wit, Cooper had disclosed Plame to him? That in order to protect his job and spare the White House, Libby invented the lie that he had leaked to Cooper? How does that make any sense?

Now, Libby's story might fit into a a theory about a conspiracy to protect Rove (who did leak to Matt Cooper). But Fitzgerald notes repeatedly in his filing that Libby is not charged with any conspiracy counts; presumably, he cannot make that argument now and then reverse field and introduce that at trial without annoying the judge.

On the question of Libby's motivation, Fitzgerald's filing misrepresents the President's own words and leaves one baffled by the underlying logic.

Reading that snippet from the WaPo,I hope Libby is keeping a clipping file of the number of times Plame is identified as an "undercover" agent as a result of Wilson's lies and Fitz' presser and uses that to demand the information that she was.

Rove did not tell Cooper that anything about Plame/Wilson would soon be declassified. He told Cooper that information about Wilson, as in Joe, would be declassified, ie, the trip. The boondoggle. The sweet tea sipping spy who wasn't. If you have a link where Cooper said Rove told him that information about Wilson's wife was going to be declassified, I would certainly like to read it.

What is the context of Fritz’s statement in his filing re: Bush told Cheney who told Libby to disclose info? Was it germane to a significant legal argument, or not? Could he have just slipped this into his filing knowing that he would set the MSM and Sorosphere afire? And take some heat (Clarice’s articles) off his mishandling of the case?

Sue you're missing the point, Rove was also saying to Cooper that he'd "already said too much" about Plame/Wilson (you can interpret this as you like) and he was telling Novak that "you heard that also" regarding Plame. Rove was in all of these cases showing that he couldn't be straight forward about Plame, that he knew there was a problem with discussing the subject.

If it makes you happy to think there isn't an issue here with Rove regarding Plame's classification that's fine with me.

Today's, "Much Ado About a Redo", is really about the liberal media's rehash of a story that did not get any traction the first time around in February. Tom Maguire calls this the non-barking dog syndrome. HAH!

I'm certain my articles had nothing to do with it. Though the Motion to Dismiss might have..Someone said earlier today (probably that smartie, Rick) that it reads like the final report Independent Prosecutors used to file which (Fitz in his presser said the law didn';t permit him to do.) Maybe it's a swan song. Maybe it was just spite. Who knows? I don't.

I wouldn't hang my hat on that if I were you. Novak would not have needed to call up the CIA for confirmation if he'd originally gotten the info on Plame from Tenet, and it wasn't Tenet who confirmed her employment to Novak when he made that call. Novak has also repeatedly stated that aside from a half-hearted caveat at that time, no one tried to persuade him not to publish her name -- and if they had he might have reconsidered.

And that's on top of the fact that an experienced pol in Washington -- like Tenet -- is hardly likely to share classified info with a R-E-P-O-R-T-E-R without an explicit understanding about whether or not, and how, it can be used.

I would like Tom Maguire to explain what he THINKS "appropriate action" means (in Bush's view), bearing in mind that the Bush Administration has made a very strong point of prosecuting leakers of classified information (see Wiretapping, NSA).

Well, Rove was Novak's second source with an "I heard that, too", and he has not been fired.

I infer that they did not consider that to be a significant breach of national security (oddly, I agree).

As to Libby, his conversations with Russert and Cooper did not out Plame.

He did out Plame to Miller; per her account, she thinks others did as well. However, she never published - what was the harm?

And Fitzgerald seems to be giving a pass to whomever first leaked to Novak (Armitage?) - why is that right?

A unifying explanation - if not for the howling of a Kerry campaign adviser (Wilson), the Plame leak would have been ignored, and should have been.

Was I wrong that in the early days of the story, July-August 2003, you were advocating this as a big story the press was ignoring? I got the sense from reading your archives you were in on a campaign to get the press interested. Did I misread that or have you changed your mind during the course of the investigation?

"And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.

And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

A reasonable person would interpret the president as promising 3 different reactions, each proportionate to 3 different actions, which differ in seriousness. Like Mr. Clinton said, "I did not have sex with that woman" and we had a picture of him shaking hands with "that woman" in a crowd in public. We never concluded that Mr. Clinton lied about shaking the woman's hand.

Look, a "leak" of "classified information" is when an official learns classified information as part of his job, and then discloses it to someone not authorized to receive it. Classified information is information which is kept secret because of the security interests of the United States. It's not information which disclosing is merely embarrassing to Joe Wilson, or Larry Johnson, or John Kerry. (Note that to Kerry's credit, he dumped Joe like a hot potato when it became obvious what a narcissistic sleazeball he is.)

'Per Libby, it was Libby who told Cooper that Joe Wilson's wife was with the CIA.'

What?

What's on second.

OH, we're having fun now. I have read my sentence six times, and it looks right (but I may be brainlocking).

To restate it, Libby's version is that Libby outed Plame to Cooper; Cooper's version is that he outed Plame to Libby, and Libby gave an "I heard that, too".

Libby's "lie" is wildly counter-intuitive - one might have expected him to lie by saying, for example, "Cooper told me about Plame".

Possible explanations - (a) a conspiracy to protect Rove (who was Cooper's actual source, or one of them) by keeping him out of the story and positioning Libby as fall guy, or (b) Libby's memory stinks.

Mine does, too, then, TM, for I thought both versions had Cooper telling Libby. Libby's version was "I heard that, too, for other reporters" and Cooper's version was that Libby said "I heard that, too."

JM Haynes, if Novak talked with Tenet we don't know anything about the content of that conversation. But Novak clearly did feel compelled to talk (again) with the CIA about Plame.

Novak has said that he didn't seek out information about Plame, "they gave it to me." This returns to the substance of whatever conversations he had prior to Rove (if we believe Rove only said 'I heard that also' to Novak").

I do understand that Tenet would be very careful about reporters, but maybe he said this is classified (don't publish!) and then Novak heard it would be declassified from Rove - or after talking with McLaughin decided to go ahead and publish.

What makes you think if Novak heard it from Tenet with a caution that it was classified and shouldn't be publish, he'd have done it any way? He says if Harlow's caution hadn't been so weak, he wouldn't have published.
Tenet has to be an important source for reporters and I doubt he's caution would be ignored by Novak.

"Why would the President not be more forthcoming? It seems like a lot of this could have been resolved long ago had he done so."

Of course, any one of six reporters, and probably lots more, or the original, primary, leaker could have cleared this up in no time flat. Fitzgerald himself, for that matter, could have wrapped things up in Feb. '04. The Prez, however, could hardly afford to look like he was trying to influence or interfere with an investigation, even if he wanted to. On the flip side, you've offered no real reason that suggests he could have satisfactorily resolved anything -- except for your own weak assumption that he knew enough to do so.

So why don't you just make your point instead of repeating the same disingenuos question at greater length with each reiteration? If you're looking to assess a collective reaction, I suggest you poll the thread with a yes or no question, tally the results, and move along.

The sudden press flap over Scooter Libby’s alleged “revelation” that President Bush declassified intelligence information related to Iraq is silly but all too predictable. The entire flap relies on mixing terms and “misunderstanding by innuendo” — a technique of demagoguery, not journalism. The flap is yet more evidence that the national press is more interested in playing “gotcha” with the Bush Administration than reporting the news. UPDATE: CNN is exploring another angle: that the White House is “hypocritical” because it has come down hard on leaks. But a word is missing in this accusation: “unauthorized.” The White House has indeed come down hard on anyone leaking classified information. The White House has also been tough on executive branch employees who pass information via unauthorized leaks. The president wants to control the dissemination of information and has made that clear. The information released today said that what Libby leaked as declassified and authorized — but try getting that clear on atv squawk show where the game is gotcha. The hypocrisy allegation, unlike the criminal innuendo, is certainly within rational bounds.

UPDATE 2: Hat-tip Captain’s Qaurters. Here’s the NY Sun article that started the press flap. The article strikes me as factual and straight-forward. I’m watching MSNBC again and the network is interviewing a man who says Bush has a political vulnerability on this issue but no legal vulnerability. Okay, I’ve written that. So the flap is the story? I think that’s the case –again, we’ve demagoguery, not journalism.

Historians will pour over the video tapes of the LSM offerings today, thinking "Wasn't LSD over as drug of choice by 2006?"

I find the scenario about Tenet unpersuavice and of course the "conpiracy" theory inn the VP's office is not even charged by the proecutor and seems a figment of some partisans who would like that to have been the case.

Doesn't it strike you as the least bit odd that these gunslingers seem to have sat in their offices waiting for reporters to call THEM to carry out this grand conspiracy,for example?

Was I wrong that in the early days of the story, July-August 2003, you were advocating this as a big story the press was ignoring? I got the sense from reading your archives you were in on a campaign to get the press interested.

I was, and I am - of course, knowing what we know now, its far from obvious what the crime might have been. But I thought then that the Bush side ought to let the chips fall, and that the press ought to do the same. So far, I am roughly 0 for 2. (I say that because I think that when Libby testified he lost confidence in the notion that the truth would set him free).

Clarice and Patrick - if Jeff were here, he would back me up that Libby's testimony about the Cooper conversation was backwards from what everyone expected. It came out in a recent Fitzgerald filing that excerpted GJ testimony. However, if it is news to you, it merits a link (but will I find one?)

Well, I'm going to bed and traveling for much of tomorrow so don't rush, but if anyone finds it, I'd appreciate an email of it, becuase to be away for so long means I'll be tracking thru threads forever to find it.Thanks

Just imagine this is all we concentrate on for so many hours a day and Libby was working on so many things for long hours every day and we can't get it straight. Just saying.

Libby called several journalists, including Cooper and Miller. (I-202-03.) As Libby tells it, Cooper, whom he reached first, asked him why Wilson claimed Cheney had
ordered the trip, to which Libby responded, "[Y]ou know, offthe-record, reporters are telling us that Ambassador Wilson's wife works at the CIA and I don't know if it's true. . . . [W]e don't know Mr. Wilson, we didn't know anything about his mission, so I don't know if it's true. But if it's true, it may explain how he knows some people at the Agency and maybe he got some bad skinny, you know, some bad information." (I-203- 06.) According to Libby, Miller, too, said something that
"triggered" him to mention that "reporters had told us that the ambassador's wife works at the CIA." (I-207-09.)

In contrast, in a deposition limited to Cooper's contacts with Libby (see II-32-33, 107), Cooper said that he (Cooper) asked Libby "something along the lines of what do you know about Wilson's wife being involved in, you know, sending him on this mission?" (II-53.) According to Cooper, Libby responded, "[Y]eah, I've heard that too" (II-54), which Cooper took as confirmation (II-81-91).

TM - It's also in the 8-27-04 Fitzgerald affidavit for the Miller (and Pincus) case, paragraph 33, though Tatel gives a more extensive quote of the most relevant part of Libby's actual testimony.

Interestingly (though it makes perfect sense), according to one of his recent filings, Libby is now apparently acknowledging that his earlier account was inaccurate and accepting Cooper's version - at least for the purposes of the trial.

LOL! Logic does require a certain intellectual rigor. Why go with an imagined scenario which requires devising improbable conversations which contradict more plausible explanations already offered by Novak himself, and apprently in shared in more detail, under oath, with Fitzgerald?

JM Hanes - I find it much easier using bold; in my browser it's hard to tell what's a quotation and what's not once everything goes italic.

By the way, here is the link to the WaPo article I was quoting from. A very funny thing happened: when I read the article earlier this evening, the official being quoted was identified as a senior White House official, who couldn't talk on the record because of administration policy. But now that has been changed, and the official is identified as a senior administration official who can't talk on the record because of White House policy.

Rove was also saying to Cooper that he'd "already said too much" about Plame/Wilson (you can interpret this as you like) and he was telling Novak that "you heard that also" regarding Plame. Rove was in all of these cases showing that he couldn't be straight forward about Plame, that he knew there was a problem with discussing the subject.

The only source for this is Cooper, and I don't think he is a particularly credible witness.

(An alternative explanation is that when Cooper talked to Rove, Cooper already knew who sent Wilson to Niger, because he learned it from his wife, Mandy Gruenwald. And that he "laundered" the knowledge through Rove and Libby, so that he could tell his bosses WH sources rather than DNC sources. And that he resisted the subpeona until he heard by way of Viveca Novak that Rove had no memory of the conversation and only a vague email that didn't mention Plame one way or another. This after he got burned with his Libby testimony where Libby told the FBI that he told Cooper, while Cooper told the FBI that he told Libby, probably because one or both of them has simply misremembered that part of the conversation.)

This probably belongs on the thread about whether reporters will challenge Fitz' appointment, but my guess if anyone does MSNBC has the strongest motive to do so.But I wouldn't be surprised if all their counsel are coordinating and will take a joint position. It is not in their interest for this case to go forward at all.

These threads seem to go all italic in my browser faster with each passing day.

JMH, go to Netscape 7.2 for mosx for reading JOM. Firefox also recoveres gracefully from late closing of html tags, but there is something about one of the ads at JOM that causes it to freeze and that's even more annoying. Netscape seems just fine, though.

cathyf - That alternative explanation of Cooper's conduct is just hilarious. I will remember it every time someone here accuses lefties of being conspiracy theorists. Libby, by the way, appears to be buying Cooper's version of their interaction now. But I'm sure Cooper still feels burned.

Well there is one thing that no one has commented on yet: What kind of idiot thinks that leaking the NIE estimates to Ms Run Amok was a good idea? Geez, I thought Cheney had better judgement than that. Can you imagine if she had written an article? Probably would have written about Victoria Flame sending her husband Jim Watson to investigate claims that Iran was seeking bluepie from Nigeria...

I wouldn't be surprised if there are additional revisions to come (and I note this article is not by the WaPo's resident Plameologist). The change to "White House" policy seems consistent with what has been the White House's basic hands off stance from the outset. Some of this piece strikes an almost bizarre note, though, like this paragraph:

Although Fitzgerald specifically said Bush was not aware of the leaking of a CIA agent's affiliation, the allegation that the president was involved at all in a leak campaign unleashed a torrent of criticism from Democrats.

Now, there was no such "allegation" in Fitzgerald's filing, and in fact he went to some length to explain why he was even bringing up the NIE -- which had precisely nothing to do with establishing the President's involvement in anything but rather with establishing Libby's state of mind and his attitude toward classified information and the importance of rebutting Wilson.

Notwithstanding the partisan howling, the article actually debunks its own characterization of the President's participation "in a leak campaign:"

The White House refused to comment directly on the court filing, except to point out that Bush's very decision to disclose classified information means he declassified it -- an assessment shared by independent legal experts. (emphasis mine)

I'm sorry, but I really don't get why folks are treating this like some stunning new revelation when I don't see how the "superiors" we already knew Libby cited could have been anyone other than the Prez & the VP.

Jeff, perhaps you should check out the dictionary definition of conspiracy. Like, dude, it takes a coupla people to make a conspiracy, whereas I'm pointing out that in the Rove-Cooper conversation we have something which only one person admits to remembering anything about. So he can say pretty much anything he wants, and no conspiracy is required.

Netscape must be the only browser I haven't experimented with, all of which fight my clipping software in some critical way and/or play havoc with my bookmarks. I really liked Camino, but even a simple cut and paste ends up with screwy formatting. I'll give Netscape a whirl -- almost seems like going back to the future.

Joe Wilsons OP-ED led people to believe he had debunked the contract documents as forgeries when in fact HE NEVER SAW THEM, AND NEVER MENTIONED THEM IN HIS REPORT BACK TO THE CIA. In fact, they were not revealed as forgeries until a year after the SOTU.

In addition, Joe Wilsons main contention that oversight was too strong in Niger to allow a illicit transfer of Uranium has been proven to be incorrect due to the illicit transfer of Niger Yellowcake to Pakistan to build their Nuclear Program.

And finally, Joe Wilson himself has long maintained and did up until the time of the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein continued to possess WMD and would use them against us.

"Joe Wilsons OP-ED led people to believe he had debunked the contract documents as forgeries when in fact HE NEVER SAW THEM, AND NEVER MENTIONED THEM IN HIS REPORT BACK TO THE CIA. In fact, they were not revealed as forgeries until a year after the SOTU.

The embassy faxed the documents to the State Department's Bureau of Nonproliferation (NP) on October 15, 2002, which passed a copy of the documents to INR.

(U) Immediately after receiving the documents, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst e-mailed IC colleagues offering to provide the documents at a previously planned meeting of the Nuclear Interdiction Group (NIAG) the following day. The analyst, apparently already suspicious of the validity of the documents noted in his e-mail, "you'll note that it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, I guess)."

(U) The INR Iraq nuclear analyst told Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the doucments was that a companion document--a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium--mentioned some type of military campaign against world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran, and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerien [sic] Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as "completely implausible." Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the uranium document, the analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents or inconsistencies with the names or dates.

On April 5, 2003, the NIC issued a Sense of the Community Memorandum (SOCM), (Niger, No Recent Uranium Sales to Iraq, NIC SOCM 2001-12.) The SOCM said, “…The IC agrees with the IAEA assessment that key documents purported showing a recent Iraq-Niger sales accord are a fabrication.”

And interestingly, although the CIA claimed it didn't decide that the docs were fakes until the Spring of 2003 (after SOTU), in Oct 2002, they warned the administration that the documents' claims were not believable without having actually seen the documents themselves, but based solely on a reading of text transcriptions of the documents' contents.

They were revealed as fakes long before 2004 and even before the SOTU.

More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.

The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief [Alain Chouet] of the French counterintelligence service [DGSE] and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002.

[snip]

Still, Chouet said in the interview that the question from CIA officials in the summer of 2002 seemed to follow almost word for word from the documents in question. He said that an Italian intelligence source, Rocco Martino, had tried to sell the documents to the French, but that in a matter of days French analysts determined the documents had been forged.

"We thought they [the Americans] were in possession of the documents," Chouet said. "The words were very similar." The former CIA official said that in fact the U.S. had been offered the same documents in 2001 but had quickly rejected them as forgeries.

Alain Chouet's story modifies the reconstruction of the affair given by the government and Sismi to Parliament in four main points.

1. Rocco Martino, the crook who spread the false documents abroad, was not working for DGSE as the Sismi director, Nicolò Pollari, has repeatedly said (also to Repubblica).

2. The CIA have been in possession of at least a part of the false documents (given out by Rocco Martino) not since October 2002 [as previously reported, my note], when they were handed over to the American Embassy in Rome by Panorama, but four months before, during the summer.

3. Contrary to what Pollari and Letta (the chief political authority for intelligence) reported, it was not the French who transmitted the false documents to Washington but rather the Americans who transmitted them to the French asking to verify their authenticity. The French complied and had denounced them as groundless since July 2002.

4. Rocco Martino, shadowed and photographed by Sismi, came into contact with the French in the summer 2002 only. Alain Chouet's story, then, reveals the gross window-dressing (let's call it that way) of our government. Now it's time to listen to him.

They were revealed as fakes long before 2004 and even before the SOTU.

And yet, the CIA decided to submit them to the IAEA because they like looking stupid? This wasn't one of the CIA's brighter moments, but claiming they did it on purpose is a bit hard to credit.

The funny thing is that there's little doubt at least a few analysts thought they were bunk, but apparently they never explicitly said so. The analyst mentioned in the SSCI (who suspected the seal and other document) is a case in point, as is the INR guy who wrote "It is improbable any such agreement was signed with his knowledge." In both cases, if the guys had followed up with a plain statement about their suspicions (e.g., "accordingly, these are most likely forgeries"), you'd expect the management would have sent them to expert document examiners I presume are on the CIA payroll. But they obviously didn't, and the contention they knew before March '03 is dubious.

The funny thing is that there's little doubt at least a few analysts thought they were bunk, but apparently they never explicitly said so.

That is just flat wrong, Cecil. The INR guy we are talking about made copies of his findings available at the "meeting" discussed in the excerpt above. In the SSCI, the protagonists all claimed that they didn't "pick up" a copy of the findings. But, SSCI also notes that in the course of the inquiry, the very document in question was found in the safes of a number of the the protagonists who claimed they'd never seen it.

The problem is in the document itself, Nash. I quoted the most explicit part, and it requires a logic leap to say "forgery." Obviously in hindsight that's what the INR guy was thinking, but he never said it.

Cecil, you need to read for comprehension. In the document provided to the higher ups, which the higher ups denied seeing, but which also showed up in the higher ups' possession, Mr. INR explicitly states that it his opinion that the docs are fakes.

In the SSCI, the protagonists all claimed that they didn't "pick up" a copy of the findings. But, SSCI also notes that in the course of the inquiry, the very document in question was found in the safes of a number of the the protagonists who claimed they'd never seen it.

When confronted with the docs in the safes, do you think the folks said, "Wow, it's like I'm seeing it for the first time!"?

On the plane I was thinking of a number of the posters here--esp in the past 2 days-- and have decided to coin a new phrase--MMFOOHS(Maybe monkeys flew out of his ass) to describe their style.
TM willl post a story which says a Milwaukee man was walking through a park in a snowstorm, heard an odd sound and turned around. To his surprise he saw a monkey chasing him.

The posts will follow:
1. Someone will ask if the park is the zoo and perhaps the monkey escaped from his cage.
2. Another asks if anyone reported a pet monkey had escaped or whether there was a circus nearby which had lost a monkey.
3. A third will note that in Japan there are monkeys that live in snowy, cold areas and question whether some had found their way to Milwaukee.
4. And then a denizen of logic free reality land will offer up."Maybe monkeys flew out of his ass" with a total inability to recognize that this is highly improbable.

Now, of course, in life, anything is possible,but posters 1-3 have my attention because they have tried to tackle the question by bringing to the table real facts and from them have drawn reasonable hypotheses.

True or false -
- The Niger uranium story was the primary physical evidence used by Bush to persuade America that we had to go to war. (Mostly true. The other cause for war was a concerted effort by Bush administration to make people blame Iraq for 9/11 without actual evidence. Saw an interesting video montage of Bush and Cheney saying the words, "Iraq", "Saddam" and "9/11" in the same sentence. More than 100 times in one month. 50% of Americans still believe they heard the president say "Saddam and al Qaeda attacked us." He didn't.)
- A majority of decision makers in government knew it to be either unlikely true, or absolutely false. (Probably true. If this was absolutely true, we would already have had the impeachment.)
- Joe Wilson pointed out it was false. (Absolutely true)
- Cheney told Scooter to leak information solely for the purpose of making the truth sound like a lie. (Probably true. Whitehouse would have denied it by now if it wasn't)
- Bush knew that the leaker was Scooter as soon as the story broke. (Probably true. He authorized the leak, up to the point of naming Plame.)
- Bush denied that he knew who the leaker was. (see above).

If you believe that any of these are either probably false or absolutely false, please provide verified journalistic references. Unvetted blogs that refer to media conspiracies don't count.